Common Sense or Gun Control? Political Communication and News Media Framing of Firearm Sale Background Checks After Newtown

Emma E. McGinty is an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she serves as deputy director of the Center for Mental Health and Addiction Policy Research. She is also a core faculty member of the Center for Gun Policy and Research and the Institute for Health and Social Policy. Her research focuses on how health and social policies affect mental health and substance abuse, with a particular interest in policy issues at the juncture of behavioral health and criminal justice policy. She has published recent studies related to firearm policy and mental illness in the American Journal of Public Health, Psychiatric Services, and the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Julia A. Wolfson is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Lerner fellow at the Center for a Livable Future. Her research focuses on policies, programs, and environmental factors that influence consumption patterns and obesity. In particular, Wolfson's dissertation investigates the complex relationship between cooking practices and public health. Her work has been published in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Milbank Quarterly, Public Health Nutrition, the American Journal of Public Health, and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Tara Kirk Sell is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also an associate at the UPMC Center for Health Security and serves as associate editor of the peer-reviewed journal Health Security (formerly Biosecurity and Bioterrorism). Her research focuses on the policy implications of infectious disease outbreaks, biosecurity, public health preparedness, and nuclear preparedness policy and practice. She has published numerous articles in the field of health security, including, most recently, an analysis of federal funding for health security. Prior to her work in academia, Sell maintained a career as a professional athlete, earning an Olympic silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Daniel W. Webster is professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he serves as director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research and as deputy director for the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence. He is one of the nation's leading experts on gun policy and the prevention of gun violence. Webster is the lead editor of and a contributor to Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis (2013) and has published more than ninety articles in scientific journals, most focusing on the prevention of violence involving guns, youth, or intimate partners. He developed one of the first courses on violence prevention in a school of public health, which he has taught for the past twenty-four years.

Abstract

Gun violence is a critical public health problem in the United States, but it is rarely at the top of the public policy agenda. The 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, opened a rare window of opportunity to strengthen firearm policies in the United States. In this study, we examine the American public's exposure to competing arguments for and against federal- and state-level universal background check laws, which would require a background check prior to every firearm sale, in a large sample of national and regional news stories (n = 486) published in the year following the Newtown shooting. Competing messages about background check laws could influence the outcome of policy debates by shifting support and political engagement among key constituencies such as gun owners and conservatives. We found that news media messages in support of universal background checks were fact-based and used rational arguments, and opposing messages often used rights-based frames designed to activate the core values of politically engaged gun owners. Reframing supportive messages about background check policies to align with gun owners' and conservatives' core values could be a promising strategy to increase these groups' willingness to vocalize their support for expanding background checks for firearm sales.